San Jose Earthquakes vs. Columbus Crew | MLS Match Preview

A pair of clubs looking to rebound from tough losses meet on Sunday afternoon when the San Jose Earthquakes play host to the Columbus Crew. The Quakes are coming off their first home loss in more than a year, their last match a 2-1 defeat by the New England Revolution at Buck Shaw Stadium. The Crew are coming off their first defeat of the new season, falling 2-0 at home to Toronto FC last weekend.

SAN JOSE EARTHQUAKES
The San Jose Earthquakes return to action after a weekend off, their last match a second consecutive loss in league play, falling 2-1 to the New England Revolution on March 29 at Buck Shaw Stadium. The Quakes are in ninth place in the Western Conference with 1 point from 3 games.

LAST MATCH

The Revolution were handed the lead on 35 minutes with their first goal of the season when San Jose defender Victor Bernardez knocked the ball into the Quakes’ net while trying to make a last-ditch clearance, after fellow defender Jordan Stewart had first pushed the ball past goalkeeper Jon Busch when he came off the line.

But the Earthquakes pulled even in the 69th minute, when Chris Wondolowski collected a deflected cross from Cordell Cato and cut a tightly angled shot across the face of goal from four yards, tucking it neatly inside the far post.

There were more late dramatics for San Jose – but this time from the visitors. Lee Nguyen raced onto a long pass down the left wing from Scott Caldwell, then cut inside a defender Clarence Goodson before beating Busch from 14 yards out for the game-winner.

Quakes boss Mark Watson made two changes to the team that fell 1-0 to Sporting Kansas City at Sporting Park. Brandon Barklage and Jordan Stewart came into the team, in place of Shaun Francis and Atiba Harris.

The Quakes saw their MLS home undefeated streak come to an end after 17 games, their first home loss since a 2-0 defeat by Real Salt Lake in the opening game of the 2013 season. The 17 games tied the sixth-longest home unbeaten streak in league history.

“We had all the momentum at the end, and I think this team is built to push for the win,” Quakes coach Mark Watson said. “It was very disappointing to see the goal go in and lose the game.”

Said defender Clarence Goodson: “We were really flirting with disaster. There were four or five plays that we were numbers down in the last 10 minutes. Sometimes you get fortunate and you don’t give up goals. We’ve scored a lot of late goals, and finally we gave one up late, and that’s kind of the way we play. It’s kind of all-or-nothing, and we got punished for that.”

There was a serious injury blow out of the New England match, as forward Steven Lenhart suffered a sprained medial collateral ligament in his right knee that could put him out of action for up to a month.

“He’s a big part of our team, of our locker room,” Chris Wondolowski said. “I feel gutted any time anyone goes down. I’m very close to Steven, and I don’t like seeing him go down, especially with the knee. ... He seems to be very optimistic about it, and I like that. I wouldn’t expect anything else from him.”

Yannick Djalo made his MLS and Earthquakes debut, coming on for the final 11 minutes, and could feature in the Columbus match. Another possibility is newcomer Billy Schuler, in his first MLS season after two years spent in Sweden, following a college career at North Carolina.

“We look at all our options,” Watson said. “I think this team is built a certain way, or has been in the past. We play with a target player and Wondo, essentially. But we look at a lot of different situations. It may be a shift in terms of those types of players, or it may be a shift for a specific game, that one option may cause them some problems.”

Chris Wondolowski scored his second goal of the season. He and center back Victor Bernardez have accounted for all four of the Earthquakes goal in league play this season.

“The talent, the mentality, the effort is all there. We’ve just got to make sure that it doesn’t take a goal to wake us up. We’ve got to make sure that from minute one, we’re ready to go,” said Wondolowski. “And we’ve got to play a full 90 minutes. We can’t play 10 minutes here, turn off and then try to pick it back up whenever we can. It’s got to be a lot better.”

COLUMBUS CREW
The Columbus Crew saw their season-opening winning streak come to halt after three games, falling 2-0 to Toronto FC on Saturday afternoon at Crew Stadium. The Crew sit in a tie atop the Eastern Conference, with nine points from four matches.

LAST MATCH

Toronto FC opened the scoring in the 11th minute. Mark Bloom found a streaking Michael Bradley down the right side of the Columbus defense, and he took goalkeeper Steve Clark by surprise on a shot from a tight angle near the endline, putting it through the 'keeper's legs and into the far side netting.

TFC then put the game out of reach in the 85th minute when substitute forward Issey Nakajima-Farran found space on the counterattack and clipped home a Justin Morrow cross from the center of the box.

Crew head coach Gregg Berhalter made no changes to the team that got a late 2-1 win against Seattle Sounders FC at CenturyLink Field.

The Crew went down to defeat for the first time with Gregg Berhalter in charge, their first league losses since losing the final three games of the 2013 season, including the season finale at home to New England.

“There’s a lot to learn from this game, but having said that, this is this group’s first loss. Since how long have we’ve been together? There will be more losses but this is our first loss,” said Berhalter. “This is a good test for us as a group to how we respond, how we get back and how the hunger is back there again. I’m looking forward to the response.”

Said goalkeeper Steve Clark: “He's our leader; we respect him, and we listen to him. He says we're going to learn from it, and we are. He'll be leading us next week, and it's a long season. The first loss of the year is always a tough one, but we've got 30 more games, and if we play like we did in the second half, we'll be ready to go.”

Through the opening four matches, Berhalter has used just 12 players as starters. Ten have remained the same; only Dominic Oduro and Jairo Arrieta have traded off, making two starts each as the lone striker.

Justin Meram came off the bench for a fourth consecutive match, while Ethan Finlay also made his second consecutive substitute appearance.

“We're a young team, and it's important to learn lessons like this," Clark said. "You've got to come out and take the game; you've got to earn it.” said defender Josh Williams: “It definitely wasn't Gregg's fault. As players we take responsibility for that, and I think it's definitely going to pick up this week.”

For a second time in as many weeks, the Crew entered the halftime interval down a goal, but in the end were shut out for the first time this season.

“I think we have to come out of the gate ready to go. That’s been our game all year. When you don’t do that, sometimes you get punished and obviously the first goal was a soft one by me. We will move on. It’s not the first [loss] and won’t be the last unfortunately,” said Clark.

Said Berhalter: “To me, it was the movement inside the penalty box, which we lacked and I think it’s just not on one player; it’s on a number of guys getting into the penalty box, making good, hard runs. When you look at goals that were scored, it’s from good movements inside the penalty box and we lacked that today.”